2019: not everything is fleeting. some feelings are deep.

this is an end of year and not an end of decade culture round-up because i don't have the adequate notes nor the research energy to do it justice. my political thoughts for the year 2019 are that it is difficult to balance wanting to be a responsible engaged citizen and yet operate and live in a system that does not work and that one might like to see brought down, ideologically, theoretically. how can an alternate imaginary (as a sociological term) be posited? can a person or a society work towards a goal if it can't be imagined? if we've been progressing (and retreating, in waves) via trial and error all this time, why do we think the challenge of climate change will be addressed in any other way? culture and art, then, can be both the beacon, and the daily salve, and therefore the only antidote during this period heavy in errors and retreating. i have endless admiration for those with the optimism to manifest the world they want to live in, and a resolution to keep trying to do the same.


books

i read a truly unprecedented 73 books this year, and don't know how i did it, except that i tried not to look at my phone while commuting. (i looked at it a lot at other times, still, sadly.) rather proud to go through my statistics and find that 60 of these books were written by women! 16 written by asian diaspora or asian writers.

i still love janet malcolm (Forty-one False Starts; Nobody's Looking at You) and will read any essay or profile she wants to write. the same goes for zadie smith (Feel Free) and, thus far, jia tolentino (Trick Mirror). generations of female essayists, when put like that.

fiction notes:
a. weike wang's Chemistry was my first experience of feeling truly represented in fiction. i'll come back to this point later, but in this case, millennial asian diaspora academics and culture, i have not seen it before.

b. i was not aware that william faulkner is lumped in (by some people who have not read him, people being some friends who i very unscientifically polled) with the standard white american male canon that we kinda know as needing to be interpreted in light of the context of the time, unacknowledged privileges, masculinity, etc. to me, faulkner is not known enough (at least in australia where one must search for his books) for exposing and exploring the unfairness in society, from the point of view of those who are not in the majority, much more so than the other male authors he is often grouped with. Sanctuary wins my prize this year for outrageously gobsmacking whiplash description. some choice cuts:

• "he had that vicious depthless quality of stamped tin"
• "His nose was faintly aquiline, and he had no chin at all. His face just went away, like the face of a wax doll set too near a fire and forgotten." - as a person who has studied skeletal jaw relationships this is just !!!
• "Snopes lit a cigar, his face coming out of the match like a pie set on edge."
• "In the pavilion a band in the horizon blue of the army played Massenet and Scriabine, and Berlioz like a thin coating of Tchaikovsky on a slice of stale bread." - again, just exclamation marks. that deliberate oxford comma singling out berlioz for special treatment. i am dead.

also, i read As I Lay Dying, which is a veritable hilarious comedy just as much as it is a modernist masterpiece or whatever everyone repeats about its key themes and stylistic innovations, which are fascinating to be sure.

my book of the year, based on an overall extremely subjective sentiment of how i remember feeling while reading it, the quality of writing, the deep historical context not usually provided in more recent or other travel writing that i have read, the prickly personal relationship with an androgynous recovering drug addict friend (annemarie schwarzenbach) that was interwoven: ella maillart's The Cruel Way: Switzerland to Afganistan in a Ford, 1939.


classical

i went to a lot of concerts this year, with highlights involving organ-related epiphanies. of course it makes sense that bruckner was an organist, and that messiaen's symphonic pieces are also reminiscent of the organ. simone young will be the sydney symphony's chief conductor from 2022!! it has been excellent to see her bring some different repertoire and energy to the SSO. would love to see her do some concert opera.

opera australia put on some new stuff this year. salome! werther! any departure from or addition to the standard romantic italian repertoire is always welcome. pinchgut leaned into their countertenor tendencies.


film

i definitely have not seen everything that has been critically acclaimed this year but here are some of my highlights: The Farewell, Walden (and slow tv in general and the meditative quality of watching things in real time), Monos, High Life (extra shoutout to whoever did robert pattinson's hair and whoever decided it wouldn't be anachronistic for him to always have a perfect fade while everything and everyone else disintegrated, while on a space station), Deerskin, Parasite.

however there was one film that blew my mind and that i would quite unreservedly say is my film of the decade: Portrait of a Lady on Fire, by céline sciamma.
coming back to the idea of representation in art, it's one thing to feel like your story is being told, that someone who looks like you or has a similar family or culture is worthy of having their story told and understood by other different people out in the world. it's another level entirely to be given a history that you never knew that you might have had, that hasn't been shown before, ever, in a film that espouses the same principles that you live by and seek out. i guess this is how many people who are part of majorities feel like most of the time! for me, it was un nouveau sentiment. i have raved about this film to anyone and everyone for the last 6 months. the way that it presents what appears to be a period love story by quietly but completely upending cinematic standards, throwing traditional character expectations and tropes out the window, yet allowing the context of the time period to stand, and weaving in meditations on desire, memory, equality, collaboration in art, music, is frankly audacious. céline sciamma is creating that imaginary, giving women a history that they haven't seen on screen before, that is barely acknowledged in the way history has been recorded, and showing it to everyone. the film is a complete work. every detail has a purpose, no references are left hanging, it is staggeringly, ravishingly beautiful and should be seen in a cinema. the pace is european, one could say, but there are no wasted moments. it is also very extremely meta. is it ahead of its time? perhaps only in the sense that it may not receive the industry awards and immediate popular adulation that it deserves, although film critics have tried their best. there is no way this film will not be analysed and appreciated for years to come. maybe this has all seemed very waffly but basically i would do almost anything to go back in time and see this film for the first time, again.